PROVIDENCE, R.I. — About a week after the work began, city officials gathered at Kennedy Plaza Tuesday morning to throw ceremonial shovelfuls of dirt to mark the beginning of the 13-month reorganization...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — About a week after the work began, city officials gathered at Kennedy Plaza Tuesday morning to throw ceremonial shovelfuls of dirt to mark the beginning of the 13-month reorganization of the plaza and the nearby street network.

With a front-end loader and a dirt pile parked behind the lectern, Mayor Angel Taveras spoke of how the $700,000 project will be “transformative” for the plaza, changing it from a bus depot into an urban town green that will host concerts, farmers markets and other gatherings.

Clifford Wood, executive director of the Downtown Providence Park Conservancy, which has been working with the city on the plaza effort, was effusive in his praise for the plan.

“I can’t wait till this starts,” he said. “I cannot wait to be here for the ribbon-cutting.”

Critics of the project have been less enthusiastic. The plan calls for moving the bus berths that were in the interior lanes of the bus area to the outer edges of Kennedy Plaza. That less centralized design will make it harder for commuters, particularly those with walking disabilities, to maneuver there, the critics say.

The morning event was held in one of the closed-off bus lanes of the RIPTA section of the plaza. The project’s first phase calls for those to be filled in to create the open public space.

During the plaza construction period, those stops have been moved to Exchange Terrace and Sabin Street, and RIPTA was continuing to modify the plan as the work continued.

RIPTA announced that starting Wednesday, a stop for five buses at the corner of Washington and Exchange streets, across from the post office, was being moved to Steeple Street because of safety concerns.

The plaza part of the project, because it affects the most people, is the main focus of the work and is scheduled to be finished this fall, said Robert Azar, city director of current planning.

The rest of the work, which involves $6.5 million in intersection changes at La Salle and Emmett squares and narrowing Fountain Street by a lane through wider sidewalks, will go into fall 2015.

The plaza crowd of about a hundred onlookers included state Department of Transportation Director Michael P. Lewis and Providence Foundation Executive Director Dan Baudouin, as well as representatives of Johnson & Wales University and the Rhode Island School of Design.

The event broke up a little after 10:30 a.m., and that worked out fine for one of the attendees, Tim Pimental, the director of landside operations at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick. Because his job includes coordinating train and car connections at the airport, Pimental said the groundbreaking gave him a practice-what-you-preach opportunity. Rather than driving, he took the airport train.

“I can catch the 10:45 express back,” he said as he headed across Exchange Terrace to the Gaspee Street train station. “I’ll be back by 11:05.”